MY INITIAL REFLECTION
Project 1 Initial Reflection
Introduction Have you ever spent more than thirty-six hours creating one project? My first photography Weebly website project took this many hours of my time, and for this reason, I am incredibly proud of the outcome of this project. For this project, I was able to interweave my web designing skills with the newly developed skill of taking photographs using the design elements, principles, and styles. I enjoyed this project and am proud of the work I put forth to make it the best website I possibly could. The amount of time that I put into this project alone made it a project worth sharing. This project came with its own challenges, lessons learned, and value that I can take with me into my profession. Challenges There were several challenges that came with creating this website which will house all of our work created in this course. Creating the website was actually one of the easier parts of this project because I have quite a lot of experience in my profession with creating websites. However, I have not created a website using Weebly until this particular project. One of the challenges was simply learning the Weebly platform and how it works. I believe that Weebly is created so that someone without website-building knowledge is still able to create a website, so I was able to pick-up pretty quickly the format and tools for the application, and I was able to start building the website right away. One of the biggest challenges for me in this project was taking all of the required photographs and making sure that each photograph fit the element, principle, or style for which I was aiming. In order to do this, I had a list of all of the requirements for each photograph, and every time I took a picture that met a particular criterion, I checked that off of my list. |
Lessons Learned
From the challenges I faced in completing this project, I learned several lessons that I will take with me in the future. The first lesson that I learned is that time management is the key to completing a project that meets or exceeds the standards set for it. This project took an incredibly long time to complete, and I was able to appropriately manage my time to prevent procrastination. I am so grateful that I started this project early because I really think that by managing my time I was able to put out the best product possible. More importantly, I learned so many lessons in photography. I have always been one that loves to take pictures, but I never really knew anything about taking great pictures. Learning about the elements, principles, and composition styles of photographs and being required to take pictures of them really forced me to look at not only the world in a different way, but also to look at how I take pictures in a different way. Because of the photography lessons I learned in this project, I was able to get better photos of my family and my beautiful town. I mostly certainly learned some photography lessons that I will carry into my future photography work.
Value
The biggest value that this project brought to me as a professional was the ability to work with Weebly websites, which in turn gives me the ability to teach others to create Weebly pages. As an instructional technology specialist in my school, I am always training teachers to use certain types of technology. Weebly is definitely a piece of technology from which teachers could greatly benefit. There are so many applications for teachers using a Weebly page to communicate with students and parents. Although I don’t do a lot of photography in my work, I do manage the website for our school. With the photography knowledge that I have gained, I may be able to take some great photos to add to our website to show off all of the wonderful things our school is doing for its students.
Conclusion
This project had many challenges but also brought lessons learned and valuable knowledge to me to help me in my career. Anytime I put hard work and a lot of myself into a project, there is a sense of pride that comes with finally submitting it. I am proud of the project that I created and am excited to show it to my professor, family, and friends. I’m looking forward to using my newfound knowledge in photography to take better photographs of my family. I am also looking forward to adding more to this website by creating new pages with the new projects that we will add to the website, and I will most certainly be looking forward to the final product of this project at the end of the semester.
From the challenges I faced in completing this project, I learned several lessons that I will take with me in the future. The first lesson that I learned is that time management is the key to completing a project that meets or exceeds the standards set for it. This project took an incredibly long time to complete, and I was able to appropriately manage my time to prevent procrastination. I am so grateful that I started this project early because I really think that by managing my time I was able to put out the best product possible. More importantly, I learned so many lessons in photography. I have always been one that loves to take pictures, but I never really knew anything about taking great pictures. Learning about the elements, principles, and composition styles of photographs and being required to take pictures of them really forced me to look at not only the world in a different way, but also to look at how I take pictures in a different way. Because of the photography lessons I learned in this project, I was able to get better photos of my family and my beautiful town. I mostly certainly learned some photography lessons that I will carry into my future photography work.
Value
The biggest value that this project brought to me as a professional was the ability to work with Weebly websites, which in turn gives me the ability to teach others to create Weebly pages. As an instructional technology specialist in my school, I am always training teachers to use certain types of technology. Weebly is definitely a piece of technology from which teachers could greatly benefit. There are so many applications for teachers using a Weebly page to communicate with students and parents. Although I don’t do a lot of photography in my work, I do manage the website for our school. With the photography knowledge that I have gained, I may be able to take some great photos to add to our website to show off all of the wonderful things our school is doing for its students.
Conclusion
This project had many challenges but also brought lessons learned and valuable knowledge to me to help me in my career. Anytime I put hard work and a lot of myself into a project, there is a sense of pride that comes with finally submitting it. I am proud of the project that I created and am excited to show it to my professor, family, and friends. I’m looking forward to using my newfound knowledge in photography to take better photographs of my family. I am also looking forward to adding more to this website by creating new pages with the new projects that we will add to the website, and I will most certainly be looking forward to the final product of this project at the end of the semester.
To download this reflection as a Word document, click the link below.
7466_steele_project 1 reflection.docx
7466_steele_project 1 reflection.docx